Playing with a Barn

A lot of kids love to play with my Barn and animals. Since I can't come out right now. I'll share the goals that I usually work on with my barn and animals so you can work on them with your own barn and animals.

I work on identifying the animals and using animal sounds. Don't forget about the tactor motor, "Vrooom vroom, beep beep". Those are important goals to work on but there is so much more. You can work on pretend play skills, make the cow eat or sleep. Working on the words "eat, night night, sleep, yum." For my barn it has pictures of the animals on the doors or in the barn, many of the barns I've seen have the same. You can match the animals to the pictures put the cow by the cow door, where does the cow go? I have 2 cows and 2 horses, so I can work on plurals. The horses are big and little, so I work on size too. When the tractor doesn't fit in the silo or in pig pen door, I'll say "it's too big". I work on prepositions, put the pig in the barn, put the farmer on top or put the farmer on the tractor. The kids love to put the animals in the silo so then I get to ask where did they go? Are they hiding? Are they in the silo? They fall down and sometimes get stuck, introducing new words.

If your child is working on 2-3 word phrases, you can work on requesting. "Want cow. Cow Eat. I want pig." When they say one word, just add one more word to it, expand on their utterance. If your child says "pig", reply "Yes, pink pig" or "Dirty pig" (My pig is muddy). When I bring the Farm I usually go with a Farm theme for my toys. I'll have Farm animal books, Farm puzzles and play Peekaboo Barn iPad app. Repetition is important with most kids and it helps for some generalization. It also introduces more animals to identify. You can go to the Printables and find Where the Animals Live printable. It has a Barn and Farm Animals. Play is usually the best way to get kids to make sounds and vocalize. You can do "Uh oh" if the animal falls down or "weeee". The Farm is always something fun to play with. So just have some fun and be aminated.